Just Life

by Neil Abramson

  “I know. And I’m sorry it was painful. Maybe I should’ve handled it differently. Just been direct with him from the start. I’m not good with father chats that don’t take place through Plexiglas.”

  “How’s that?”

  “My dad. You know who that is, right?”

  Sam shook her head.

  “Really? Walden is my mother’s maiden name. My dad’s last name was Shroeder.”

  Sam thought it was familiar but couldn’t place it.

  “Shroeder? You really don’t know? Ponzi scheme? Multibillion-dollar fraud? Stealing people’s pensions? Sentenced to twenty-five years in prison?”

  Sam took her eyes off the road long enough to take in Tom’s features again. Now she could see the resemblance. “Holy shit,” she said. “You’re that Shroeder’s son?”

  “Dear old dad. I thought you knew. It’s not like it’s a secret.”

  “Except for the name change.”

  “OK, so I’ve still got a little shame thing going on. That, and the death threats and hate mail started becoming a little tedious.”

  “I read a New York Times Magazine story about you a few years back.”

  “Ah, yes. ‘The Sins of the Father.’ Lovely piece, except for the part that suggested I’m a liar.”

  Sam remembered now. His father had been convicted a decade ago. Tom had been forced to leave Harvard Business School after the trial. There was always a cloud about what the son knew, although he repeatedly protested his innocence. Tom eventually finished his degree at City College and claimed he went into government and public service to try to make up for his father’s misdeeds.

  “Wow,” was all Sam could manage. “Your dad really ruined your life.”

  “For a while. But I decided that my father’s choices didn’t need to be mine. I try to own my life.”

  “And how’s that working for you?”

  “Pretty good, I guess. Except for the headaches. But I do think it made me stronger when I needed to be there for my own son.” Tom yawned. “Anything else you want to know?”

  “Actually, yeah. What’s with the two watches?”

  Tom threw her that boyish grin and for some reason this time Sam didn’t find it nearly as irritating. “A birthday present from my kid. It stopped working two days after he gave it to me. I wear it because it reminds me.”

  “Of him?” Sam asked.

  “No. I don’t need to be reminded of that. I wear it because it reminds me of who he expects me to be.”

  Sam liked that answer. Maybe he wasn’t completely full of crap. “My mother once told me that I couldn’t trust a man with two watches because he never really knows the correct time. Sound right to you, Walden?” Will you be able to tell me the correct time when I need it, Assistant Deputy Mayor Walden? Can I trust you? Sam wondered.

  Silence.

  “Walden?” Sam repeated.

  She glanced over. Tom’s head was tilted back on the rest and his breathing was slow and deep. He had fallen asleep. Sam decided that probably was best for the both of them.

  Tom finally awoke as Sam double-parked in front of the shelter.

  “Crap. I’m sorry,” he said as he stretched. “That was really selfish of me.”

  “No worries. It was the most pleasant time I’ve actually spent with you,” Sam replied, but her tone was more teasing than unkind.

  “Did I do anything stupid in my sleep?”

  “More than you’ll ever know. So what about the shelter?”

  “You probably think you earned your part of the deal.”

  “Yes, I do think that.”

  “I guess that’s fair.”

  Sam exhaled in relief. “An additional thirty days?”

  “Yes. See? I’m not horrible. Just a weak-minded civil servant.”

  “And they can go to Ackerman if I can’t place them?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I’ll need to smooth over whatever feathers you seem to have ruffled, but I should be able to do that. I’d like to be able to give you more time, but Morgan is pushing really hard.”

  Sam bristled at the name. “Morgan? What the hell does she have to do with my shelter?”

  “You don’t know that either? Lady, you need to get out more. She put an above-market bid on your place and is racing to get to contract.”

  “Why? What does she want with my shelter?”

  “She says she wants to turn it into a lab annex. But honestly, I think it has more to do with the fact that she wants to be the one to put your lights out. She’s not very nice.”

  “I noticed.” Sam switched off the engine and handed Tom the keys. After she got out, Tom slid over to the driver’s side and started the car. “Good luck with the dogs,” he said.

  “You’ll let me know if there’s a problem I might need to know about?”

  “If I can,” he said.

  Sam knew this was only a partial answer, but it was an honest one. “OK. Thanks, Tom.”

  Tom’s eyebrows lifted a bit. “Tom?”

  “That is your name, isn’t it?”

  Tom smiled as he drove away from the curb.

  6

  Under a large oak in the shadow of the convention party stage, Gabriel sat a few feet away from 36-A, half a dozen paper-wrapped packages of deli meat in his lap. The priest opened the first package and a cloud of garlic, black pepper, and roasted meat enveloped them. “Pastrami,” Gabriel said, and removed a thin slice of the meat and held it in his open palm. 36-A crept forward and, with his eyes on Gabriel the entire time, took the slice and retreated. The dog’s touch was gentle—more lips and tongue than teeth. It was easy to see the dog’s appreciation of the flavor; he immediately returned to Gabriel’s hand, his tail moving in broad circles. Gabriel laughed and offered 36-A another piece.

  “Your tail’s about to come unscrewed, friend,” he said.

  Gabriel introduced the dog to the other meats, careful to make sure that 36-A didn’t overdo it. The distance of the dog’s retreat gradually shortened so that by the time Gabriel opened the final package, 36-A was pressed against the priest’s thigh. Gabriel pulled the copy of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats from his jacket and began reading to 36-A aloud about “Gus: The Theatre Cat.”

  Curious visitors stopped to speak with the priest and admire the dog. During the first of these visits 36-A dropped to the ground and peed on himself. Three visitors later, the dog allowed himself to be touched. On the fifth visit, 36-A initiated the contact, approaching the stranger with tail in full motion, requesting attention.

  Gabriel couldn’t help but marvel at the incredible resiliency of this creature. 36-A’s true personality was resurfacing—or perhaps even showing itself for the first time—and all that the dog had required was a small space free from the threat of harm.

  Gabriel quickly cleaned up their trash and brought 36-A across the park. During their walk the dog tried to look at everything at once—a black squirrel that crossed their path and chattered angrily at the pair; a plastic bag floating before them on a gentle breeze; an ice cream vendor shouting his flavors of the day; a group of friends playing with a Frisbee.

  And, of course, there were all the dogs. 36-A had met others of his kind at the shelter, but they had been nothing like this. These animals had an infectious excitement and confidence about them. They came up to 36-A, hopping from side to side one moment and then frozen, butts shoved high in the air, the next. 36-A either had forgotten the canine language of an invitation to play or had never known it. After the first few failed efforts, however, the dog got the idea. He looked longingly at Gabriel. The priest knew he might spend the rest of the day chasing the dog down through the park, but he couldn’t bring himself to say no. Gabriel let him off the lead. 36-A ran, tumbled, jumped, and yipped among his playmates without a shred of self-consciousness. Every few minutes the dog looked up to make certain Gabriel was still nearby.

  After about thirty minutes, Gabriel knew it was time to move on. He whistled and 36-A quickly returned to
his side. The priest experienced a tiny bloom of pride; he had sent out a message and it had been received and understood. They had begun the process of creating their own language based on mutual trust. As Gabriel led 36-A out of the park to the huge pet store on Columbus Avenue, he found it hard to keep from grinning.

  Inside the store Gabriel directed 36-A to the long row of stuffed dog toys. Fuzzy stuffed animals (sheep and cows apparently were the big sellers), humans (the mailman and the veterinarian were popular), and common objects (bones, of course, and fire hydrants) in different shapes, sizes, and colors spread out before them.

  The dog looked around uncertainly. “Pick one,” Gabriel said kindly. 36-A stood transfixed. “Go on. It’s OK.” Gabriel grabbed the first toy he saw—a fuzzy basketball—and squeezed it near 36-A. The toy gave out a noise somewhere between a dry wheeze and a squeak. 36-A winced and backed away. “Not your style. Got it.”

  Gabriel walked the dog up one side of the aisle and down the other. 36-A showed momentary interest in a few of the toys but ultimately rejected them. After ten minutes the dog paused before a bin of fuzzy green turtle plushies with large, kind brown eyes and broad smiles. The dog gingerly picked one of these out of the bin and stared at Gabriel with the toy dangling from his mouth.

  “You’re sure?” Gabriel asked.

  36-A sat on his haunches, the turtle secure in his jaws.

  “Done,” Gabriel said. He steered 36-A to the row of registers at the front of the store and paid. Once they stepped outside, the dog pranced for a beat or two.

  As the pair walked the streets of the Upper West Side, 36-A carried the turtle in his mouth with his head high, eyes wide open and bright, proudly displaying his new toy to every passerby.

  Gabriel’s knees throbbed in earnest, but 36-A looked so happy showing off his turtle toy that the priest didn’t have the heart to take him off the streets. Instead he offered up a silent benediction to lost youth and Advil and kept walking.

  At 105th Street, Gabriel stumbled and nearly fell. He caught himself just in time. Once he regained his physical balance, he forgot where he was and how he had come to be walking with a dog he didn’t recognize.

  A name came to him in the fog of his disorientation. Atlas. He recalled a dog named Atlas. Was this Atlas?

  Gabriel’s head filled with different voices. Men, women, and children competed in the same limited space for his attention.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

  “I smacked the kid… yeah, hard. He deserved it…”

  “My wife knows about the affair; she said she would kill herself if it didn’t stop, but I love her…”

  “… four weeks since my last confession…”

  His vision blurred under the weight of the burdens others had thrust upon him and of snippets of old sermons long devoid of meaning.

  “… if they won’t give me a bonus, I figured I would take one…”

  “We read now from Psalm 137:8: ‘O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, how blessed will be the one who repays you with the recompense with which you have repaid us. How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock…’”

  “He’s married, but he says he is leaving her for me…”

  “I worry where we will get the money…”

  “… dashes your little ones against the rock…”

  “I called him a faggot and then threw him out of the house…”

  “Because his damn dog bit me, that’s why…”

  “… and the lion shall eat straw like the ox… They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain…”

  “… dashes your little ones against the rock…”

  Men, women, children. Which voice was his? Which memories were his own? Gabriel smacked the sides of his head to clear the voices.

  A woman on the street bumped into Gabriel’s hip. “I’m sorry, Father,” she said. She smiled at him and then vanished into the moving crowd of pedestrians. The woman was familiar—not an exact match by any means, but close enough to force Gabriel to catch his breath.

  Channa?

  The narrators in Gabriel’s head stilled, but before reason took over, the dog tethered to his wrist jerked him forward after the woman. The dog dodged bodies from both directions, tugging the bewildered priest in his wake.

  The woman disappeared around a corner. The dog pursued and the leash slipped out of the priest’s hand. “Atlas!” Gabriel called. Gabriel lost sight of the dog at the bend. “Atlas, come back.” Gabriel charged after the dog.

  When Gabriel turned the corner, he found the dog in the arms of a boy with green eyes and a strange aliform protrusion jutting from his back. Gabriel blinked hard twice and recognized the odd appendage as an ordinary backpack with an instrument case pushing out of the top.

  “Hello, Father,” the boy said, petting the dog in his arms. “Who’s this?”

  “Atlas,” Gabriel answered. “I think his name is Atlas.”

  The boy paled at the name. “Is that a joke?”

  “No, son.” Gabriel gazed at the boy. A warm sensation spread through his chest, like a sip of Scotch during Advent. “Do I know you?”

  “Christ.” The boy led Gabriel by the arm to an empty stoop and urged him to sit down. He placed the dog in the priest’s lap. “I’m Andy, Father. You know me. And that isn’t Atlas.”

  “I’m sorry. I know that name… I know it is a dog’s name, but I can’t place it. Where is Atlas?”

  “Atlas is dead. Don’t you remember?”

  “Tell me.”

  Andy shook his head. “Don’t ask me to do that.”

  “Tell me, please,” Gabriel begged. “I can’t make any of the voices match.”

  Andy stared down at his dirty sneakers. “OK, Father,” he said.

  Andy inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

  “An eleven-year-old boy runs away from his fourth foster home. He runs because he can and because he knows no one will look too hard for him. He finds a German shepherd mutt on the streets. The boy calls the dog Atlas because the dog lifted the boy’s world.

  “The boy gets stuffed into a new home and his shrink convinces his new foster parents to allow him to keep the dog. The shrink believes that Atlas gives the boy a sense of stability. Stability… the boy doesn’t even understand the concept because he has never experienced it; he just knows that the dog had been one of the few living things in his life he could count on.

  “The new fosters actually seem OK, but the boy’s new foster uncle is a different creature entirely. The boy sees the looks his foster uncle gives him. These are leering, predator glances that, even at the age of eleven, the boy has learned to recognize and fear.

  “When the door to the boy’s bedroom creaks open one night during his third week in the house, Atlas is instantly alert. The uncle grabs Atlas by the collar and locks him in the boy’s closet. Then the uncle turns on the boy: ‘You say anything about this, I’ll kill your dog.’ The boy would sacrifice anything for the dog, even himself. The boy feels the uncle’s hard, calloused hands under the blanket pulling on his pajama bottoms. Groping and desperate hands. Punishing and controlling hands. The boy whimpers. The uncle smacks him across the mouth. ‘Shut up, you little punk.’

  “The closet door must’ve been broken or something because one second the boy squeezes his eyes shut as the uncle rolls him on his stomach and the next Atlas is on the uncle, ripping into the flesh of his forearm. The uncle screams, but Atlas will not let go. The boy wills Atlas to rip and tear.

  “And he does.

  “Lights snap on, the uncle screaming, blood seeping through fingers, a kick to Atlas’s ribs. ‘Remember what I told you,’ the uncle hisses through pained gasps.

  “The uncle tells the foster father that he was just coming in to check on the boy when the dog attacked without reason or provocation. The boy tries to come to the dog’s defense and, notwithstanding the warning, explains what actually happened in that bedroom.
<
br />   “But no one believes the boy. He has been known to lie.”

  Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed against the flood of images the boy’s voice brought to life. When that didn’t work, he wrapped himself in his arms and began to rock in place.

  “The foster father and the uncle insist that Atlas is a dangerous dog and must be euthanized. They bring the boy to the animal control office with them. The boy keeps waiting for someone or something to intervene and save the dog. He had seen enough television and movies to know that horrible events like this only happen to horrible people and he is not horrible. The dog will be saved; the uncle will be punished. The boy is so sure of the happy ending that he doesn’t even think to say goodbye. Instead the boy and the dog share a last confused and frightened glance as the tech takes the dog to a back room.

  “Atlas dies from the needle. The earth drops. When the dog does not return from the back room, the boy’s understanding of defender and victim becomes hopelessly muddled. Heroes die. And they die at the hands of creatures you wouldn’t even honor with your spit.

  “The boy cuts himself that night… deep, vertical cuts. Irrevocable cuts.”

  Gabriel felt the boy’s hands on his cheeks, lifting his face. “Now open your eyes, Father. Look at me.”

  Gabriel could not resist the boy’s command.

  “That was where you found me,” Andy continued. “At the hospital. You showed me a glimmer of the possibility of peace through my shadows. You believed me and offered me the beginnings of a life in a new foster home. You had the foster uncle arrested and prosecuted.”

  Gabriel knew the face before him. The murk and confusion receded. “Andy?” he asked tentatively.

  Andy nodded. “That’s how you know the name Atlas, Father. You shared that burden with me.”

  “I’m so sorry. I should never have asked you to remember. Forgive my selfishness. I didn’t—”

  Andy shook his head. “There is nothing to forgive. The memories of Atlas and everything after are always with me. But that day in that hospital room? I had nothing left. You walked in and you were the face of God for me, Father. Not hope exactly, but something other than despair—and that was what I needed.”